“All I could think about was her. Was she thinking about me?”

Finally got a chance to watch Moulin Rouge.  Touching story, wonderful music, and a powerful theme: the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and to be loved in return.

The whole movie centers around love. But what is love? How can you really tell whether you are in love or not? When can you confidently claim that you love someone?

Satine – The Courtesan

Satine told Christian that she was in love with him after he sang the song for her. But was she truly in love? We can hardly know. Probably Satine herself didn’t even know. As she said, she was a courtesan. She was paid to make men believe what they want to believe. For her, love was no more than a word, a word that she should say in appropriate time. Her job determined that she could not have her own feeling. She could only do what she was supposed to do.

In this sense, Christian actually gave her a new life, causing her to ponder upon what love is, what life is about, and to respect her own feeling.

Christian – Born to Love

“Above all things I believe in love. Love is life oxygen. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love.”

It seems that love is the meaning of Christian’s life. He believes in love, and it is obvious that Christian hopelessly fell in love with Satine after the meeting in the elephant. On that night, he was trying focus on writing, but he could not focus.

“All I can think about is her. Is she thinking about me?”

Without knowing it, he’d fallen in love. When love knocks your door, it’s hard for you to resist.

Falling in Love

People always ask for signs of falling in love. Maybe this is one sign: you just cannot get her out of your mind, and every thought is a thought of her.  You become a guesser of his mind: What is he thinking? Is he thinking about me?

For some untold reason, you sense that the other person has similar thoughts and feeling. Most of the time, you are so sure that you two are meant for each other, that her desire for you is as strong as yours for her. But sometimes, you are so uncertain. The back-and-forth thought keeps haunting in your mind, and you are like picking up petals of a flower and iterating “she loves me; she loves me not”.

This ambivalent feeling is torturing. But surprisingly, you enjoy its torture, and you cannot resist it. You get addicted to it.

Soul Mate

In The Symposium, Plato mentioned that in primal times, people had doubled bodies, who were half man and half woman. These original people were very powerful, so powerful that it causes Zeus’ concerns.  So Zeus cripples them by chopping them in half, separating the two bodies. Ever since that time, people run around looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal state of wholeness.

I like this story.  Similar to Buddhist philosophy of karma, the story adds some romance to our life. It "romantically" explains why people often feel incomplete and have this deep desire to find “the other half”.  This searching process is so long and tedious that we start to become frustrated, and as a coping mechanism, we force ourselves to get used to this incompleteness.

Until one day, the other half suddenly appears in your life……The presence of the other half reminds you again that you are incomplete. You two may appear to be quite different: different personalities, different lifestyle, and different hobbies. But you don’t know why, you just fall into each other. Maybe the only thing you can say is “I love not because who you are, but because who I am when I’m with you.”  You fall in love not because he is handsome or she smart, but only because you feel complete when you are with her – you actually complete each other: you are two bodies in one soul.

Both of you long for the reunion to make each other complete again; but it is not easy for either of you to take the first step. Both of you case too much about the other half, which is the last thing you want to lose.

This is where the ambivalent feeling happens. It doesn’t happen for everyone you hang out with; It doesn’t happen for everyone you think is cute; It happens only for the one that attracts on the level of souls. Because you can feel in your heart that the other is the one you have been searching, and you are so sure. But we the mortal can never predict what will happen and what are the consequences of our actions, and this uncertainty give rise to doubts in heart. You are so sure and at the same time, you are so uncertain. And you start playing “he loves me; he loves me not” game again and again. Actually, the two of you feel the same ambivalence, and you share the same unsettling feelings.

The adventure

Now here is the dilemma: you can freely flirt with the ones you only feel cute, but you can hardly express your feelings to the one that attracts you on the level of souls. You can hardly do anything other than to bury your feelings.

Maybe God designed us that way: even when we meet our other half, even when we feel the attraction of the souls, we still cannot know it for sure in our mind. It was an easy job for Adam to claim Eve as “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” – Eve was the only woman! But for us, it needs a little bit faith.

It is indeed an adventure for us.

Three People in Your Life

“The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

It is said that you will meet three people in your life: the one who you love, the one who loves you and the one you spend your life with.

It is a blessing that these three people are one in your life. That’s why in the film it claims that the greatest thing it not only to love, but still need to be loved in return.

But for most people, the three people are different. Maybe that’s the biggest prank that life gives us. Most of the times, however, it is us who let love slip away.

Have You Fallen in Love

You don’t care for being the center of attraction. You don’t care for turning the heads of everyone in the room. But you do want to turn someone’s head. And you do want to be special to someone.

You care too much about her that you want to show your best. But the every thought of showing your best causes you to be nervous and acting awkward. You try our best to hide the awkwardness and maybe you are so good at covering it that no one else can even notice. But in your heart, you know that you are uneasy; and you are uneasy because of her. But at the same time, you feel excited and even feel completed by her. When you are in her presence, you feel satisfied.

So have you fallen in love?

While reading this passage, if someone keeps popping into your mind, then there is no doubt that you have. Go for it, although you don’t know where it goes. It is an adventure that is worth taking.

The stupidest moment in your life may be when you fall in love. But it is better to be acting stupid than never fall in love. You might end up doing a lot of stupid things, but you are a lot closer to finding your love than those masters of dating, who can see through other people, consider them as expendable and know how to manipulate them. For your love, you are willing to be acting stupid.

“We love because it is the only true adventure.”